


Running From Who You Are

by vogue91



Category: X-Men (Movieverse)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, The Cure
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-20
Updated: 2018-03-20
Packaged: 2019-04-05 02:53:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14034570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vogue91/pseuds/vogue91
Summary: “I suppose you’ve got a pretty decent idea of where I’m going, or you wouldn’t have stopped me. You’ve never been too prone of minding other people’s business. Particularly mine.”





	Running From Who You Are

The usual green cloak on her shoulders, making her look like a fairytale character, not like the monster she felt she was.

That timid and bashful look, taking her back in time, as if during the past years she had kept living on the road, as if she had forgotten the feeling of a roof on her head. She slipped close to the walls, feeling like a thief. And, somehow, she knew she was.

She was stealing the very essence of the work strenuously brought on from Xavier before his death, she was stealing every certainty from her friends, she was stealing all the words that in that place where repeated like a mantra, vowed to convince them that they weren’t different, just special.

She sighed, and went toward the front door.

Arrived on the last hallway, she felt her wrist being grabber. Taken from the instinct of escaping, she didn’t even turn to see who the assailant was, and kept running trying to escape those confident fingers.

She only stopped when she heard a mocking laughter she knew all too well.

“Going somewhere nice, kid?” a deep and derisory voice asked her. Finally Rogue turned to face him, an eyebrow raised.

“I’m going out for a walk, Logan.” she replied, aware that the chances he was going to believe her were very much close to zero. The man, in fact, frowned and nodded at the cloak.

“And how long of a walk, exactly?” he asked, interrogative. Rogue sighed once again, wiggling out of the mutant’s grasp.

“Please... let me go.” she begged him. Wolverine raised his arms in sign of surrender and smiled ironically.

“I’m not holding you back. And I’ve got no right to do so.” he got closer to the girl’s face, knowing that it could be a sly coercive method. “I just wish you’d tell me where the hell you’re going.” he whispered, trying to be seductive; which, as a matter of fact, had never been an easy task for him.

“I suppose you’ve got a pretty decent idea of where I’m going, or you wouldn’t have stopped me. You’ve never been too prone of minding other people’s business. Particularly mine.” she murmured, still feeling protective about what she felt for the man. It was old history, or at least it was with her concept of time.

She loved Bobby, but her shivers when Logan got close, _too_ close, exposed how rationality gave way to instinct.

“Marie...” he whispered, bringing a hand to his face, as if trying to focus. She held her breath. He never called her by name, the best she could get instead of ‘kid’ was Rogue... and she didn’t know whether to be scared or unexplainably proud of it.

“Logan.” she answered, smiling, but getting in return just a reprimand look from the mutant.

“Do you remember when we first met?” he asked, and the girl wondered where he was going with it. Nevertheless, she nodded. She was never going to forget that day, when all had changed, when she had finally found a hope in that world that had given her nothing more than loneliness and horrified looks fixated in her eyes.

“You and I seemed a lot more similar than we actually were. I was alone by choice, just like you. Except you had made that choice because you thought you were a monster, am I wrong??” he asked, without giving her an actual chance to reply different from what he imagined. Rogue frowned and lowered her eyes.

“True. But I can’t understand like you speak of it in the past tense. Just because I’m here, just because there are other mutants, it doesn’t mean I’m not dangerous.” her voice was barely audible, and Logan felt like it wasn’t directed to him as much as to herself. He clicked his tongue, annoyed, and took the girl by her shoulders, shaking her.

“Kid, you’re not more a monster than we are. You’re not a monster more than Ororo, that with the blink of an eye could destroy anything in a mile radius with a lightning. You’re not a monster more than Scott was, you know how bad he could control his ability when he didn’t have his glasses. You’re not more of a monster than even Xavier was, seeing how he got into other people’s minds.” he hissed, feeling a sharp pain remembering the two dead men. “You’re not a monster more than me. Or have you forgotten that you’ve risked to die because of me, a few months ago?” he added, and regretted it right away. The girl opened her eyes wide and blushed, wiggling out of his grasp.

“You were about to kill me? Right, until I’ve touched you and took care of that.” she said, sarcastic and also horribly close to tears. Logan rolled his eyes, as if to strip her of any credit.

“The Cure won’t make your guilt disappear. It will only create new regrets.” he said in the end, resigning to the fact that he was going to get nothing out of beating around the bush. She shrugged, intent.

“I’m going to have more advantages than losses, Logan.” she replied, little prone to continue an argument that she didn’t want to have in the first place. She knew exactly what she was going to face. She had waited years for something like that to come and free her from the chains of her curse, but she had always thought about it like nothing more than a dream, a utopia. And now that the utopia had become real, now that she could’ve finally been like all the others, without entrenching behind those damn gloves...

No. Logan wasn’t going to confuse her. Not this time.

“You’re letting yourself being convinced by the delusion that being like them is the best thing that can happen to you. That being...” the man grimaced. “ _normal_ is the only right choice. I thought you were smarter than that, kid.” he scolded her.

Rogue blushed violently, hit by Wolverine’s words.

“I just want to touch a person without making them die. I’m not a mutant, I’m cursed. I want to live my life without the weight of this... _gift_ that makes no sense to me.” she said. Logan stared at her, he lit up a cigar and smiled.

“You know, kid” he started, his voice lower now. “I think life is a phenomenon incredibly overrated.” he looked at Marie’s confused expression.

“What do you mean?” she asked, getting closer. She had seen the slight wrinkles formed on his forehead the moment he had said those words.

“Do you really believe that us, all of us, haven’t thought the exact same thing you did when we’ve known about the Cure? That we haven’t thought that our lives would’ve been incredibly simpler if we hadn’t been mutants anymore?” he asked, calm. He kept smoking, staring at a spot over the girl’s head. He knew that in order to convince her he would’ve had to use words Xavier would’ve been proud of, because no one like him was capable of giving back faith to a mutant who felt disgusted with what he was.

He just hoped he was capable of it.

“You, as a mutant, have always taken too much into consideration what you’re capable of doing, kid. So you’ve just lost sight of yourself, haven’t you? And isn’t it underestimating life?” he grimaced, incredulous at his own words. He really wasn’t the most indicated person to talk about trust and values. He sighed, his hands back on her shoulders. “You’ve got an incredible potential. And part of it is also being able of living better, even with your gift.” he said, trying to catch in the girl’s eyes any sign that she had gotten the message, that she agreed with him. He would’ve settled for anything.

She shook her head, but at the same time smiled.

“I appreciate you trying, Logan. I can’t imagine how much it has costed you telling me all this.” she whispered. Wolverine rose an eyebrow, that expression typical of him, showing all his sarcasm.

“You’re still going, aren’t you?” she shrugged.

“I want to know how’s the textures of the skin of the people I love. I don’t think it’s such a crazy desire.” was her only answer, whispered, as if she wasn’t talking to the man in front of her, but as if she was still trying to convince herself.

“Be careful, kid.” he recommended, sad.

That feeling of protectiveness he felt for Rogue had always caught him off guard, but right now he felt it was about something more.

With the death of Xavier and Scott, he knew that Ororo and him had to continue the work. And he was aware of how hard it was going to be, that he didn’t have the means nor the patience to act like Charles Xavier would’ve wanted.

And Rogue that day was his first defeat, a defeat that burned for how close, _personal_ he felt it.

Nothing was destined to stay the same. And in the light of that, he would’ve had to change as well.

He went to a window and watched Rogue getting away stealthily, a darker spot almost invisible in the grass.

_Good luck, kid. I hope you find what you’re looking for._

He put out the cigar and got away.

His task had just begun.

 


End file.
